Proceedings

The Second International Conference for Refugees in the

Middle East

"Human Security: International Community Obligations and Hosting Communities’ Role"

A Scientific Referred Conference

Editing

Dr. Mohammad Fo’ud Al-Hawamdeh Faculty of Education

Dr. Fawwaz Ayoub Momani Director of Refugees,

Displaced Persons and Forced Migration Studies Center

Refugees, Displaced Persons and Forced Migration Studies Center Yarmouk University

2017

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Challenges of Refugees Education and Conflicting Priorities: Case of Syrian Refugees in Jordan

Abdullah Bataineh, PhD student at Sapienza University of Rome, E-mail: Abdullah.bataineh@uniroma1.it

Fawwaz Ayoub Momani, Associate Professor. Director of

Refugees, Displaced Persons and Forced Migration Studies Centre. Yarmouk University, Irbid-Jordan

E-mail: refuge@yu.edu.jo, Fawwaz.momani@yahoo.com

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Abstract

This paper talks about the status of education for the Jordanian and Syrian students in Jordan after the Syria crisis. The question of research is: will the government of Jordan and international organizations provide education to Syrian refugees without affecting the quality of education for Jordanian students? This study is based on a secondary data from previous researches, and some primary available data collected by interviews with administrators at MOE, NCHRD, MOPIC and QRCETI. The study has shown that there is a conflicting priority between enrolling the Syrian students at the education system in Jordan and maintaining the quality of education for the national students. The quality of education for nationals at the host communities has been impacted by the crisis; meanwhile, its value for refugees is slightly better than the average in their own country before the war. Nevertheless, this study added that the international organizations intervention always has been creating a multi-tier education system at the host communities. Therefore, it is suggested that there is a need for a significant paradigm shift in the way how international organizations respond to refugee education at the host communities, as well as carrying out a project-based plan to remedy the impact of the crises on the education system at these communities. Add to the aforementioned that this impact is a long-term impact, and it has more qualitative than quantitative effect on the education system in the host communities. Accordingly, an opportunity to compromising the conflicting priorities and reducing the intercommoned tensions at these host communities will emerge.

Key Words: Syria Crisis, Refugees Education, Jordan, International Organizations, Overcrowding, Double-shift Schools

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This piece of research is accomplished with the help of numerous people, many of whom contributed their information and ideas to the conceptualization, design and analysis of this review of education status for refugees and nationals in Jordan. Many thanks to people at MOE: Dr. Amira Kiwan, Dr. Saleh Al-Khalayleh, Dr. Khawla Abo Al-hija, Alaa Hnaity, Tariq Shatnawi, Issa Frehat, Hisham Abo Khashabih, Nuha Abo Hait and Mohammad Bataineh; people at NCHRD: Dr. Abdallah Ababneh and Khattab Abulibdeh; people at QRCETI: Dr. Ruba Al-Omari, Marwan Al-Turman and Ali Al-mahasis; Osama Al-Qaysi at MOPICl; prof. Pierluigi Montalbano at Sapienza University of Rome, prof. Abdel Baset Athamneh Yarmouk University and finally people at RDFSC.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this paper represent those of the author and not necessarily those people in the acknowledgment. Therefore, no one can be held responsible for the accuracy or reliability of information. Please, exercise your own judgment regarding the suitability of the content.

ACRONYMS

GOJ The Government of Jordan

MOE The Ministry of Education in Jordan

MOPIC The Ministry of Planning and International Cooperation in Jordan

WBD The World Bank Database

UN The United Nations

UNHCR The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees

UNICEF The United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund

UNRWA The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East

USAID The United States Agency for International Development

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EU The European Union

QRTA The Queen Rania Teachers Academy in Jordan

UNESCO The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization

WB The World Bank

IMF The International Monetary Fund

UNDP The United Nations Development Programme

MOHE The Ministry of Higher Education & Scientific Research in Jordan

AMF The Arab Monetary Fund

TIMSS Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study

PISA Programme for International Student Assessment

DOS The Department of Statistics in Jordan

NCHRD The National Center for Human Resources Development in Jordan

QRCETI Queen Rania Center for Educational Technology and Information in Jordan

RDFSC Refugees, Displaced Persons & Forced Migration Studies Centre - Yarmouk University

MENA Middle East and North Africa Region

IYF The International Youth Foundation

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1. Introduction

The Syria crisis has considered the world's largest humanitarian crisis since World War II. It has triggered the world's biggest refugee crisis nowadays. Jordan has topped a list of ten countries which host more than half of the world’s refugees, according to an Amnesty International (AI) report. Jordan is hosting more than 2.7 million refugees, and it was ranked as the top refugee-hosting country (Malkawi, 2016) [1]. However, Jordan provides generous efforts to enroll Syrian children in its public school system, but more than 80,000 out of 226,000 Syrian children in Jordan were not in formal education during the school year 2015-2016. "A lost generation of Syrian children and youth is a slow-burning disaster for human rights and the region’s future." (Van Esveld, 2016) [2]. On the one hand, it's an urgent priority for all the international organizations and international donors that all Syrian students get an access to education at the host communities. But, the problem is that when there is no enough capacity for enrolling those pupils at the education systems in their host communities. On the other hand, there is another urgent priority for the governments of these host communities to maintain the quality of education for their nationals, as well as trying to keep the pace of progression in their education systems. Accordingly, this will create a sort of conflicting priorities between national and international players at the host communities.

Jordan has a long illustrious history in hosting refugees and displaced people, as well as people who suffered from forced migration. Therefore, it has been always difficult for its education system to recover from the challenges brought by hosting those refugees. In addition, receiving many waves of refugees in different years has undermined the desired progress Jordanians were looking for at their education system. So that, there are two important questions which have risen from this context: will the international intervention enroll the Syrian students at the Jordanian education system without affecting the quality of education for local students? And the second question is whether their intervention will create again a multi-tier education system in Jordan or not? Education is the heart of sustainable development and welfare system for any country in the world. In the absence of oil, gas and other natural resources, education with high quality is a must. Accordingly, education in Jordan is the most valuable resource to generate income and to formulate the human capital. For many years, Jordan has been investing in its education system and has accomplished significant results among the region's countries.

However, the quantitative approach in education is no longer dominant, because in the 21st century quality of education is the matter. Education with high-quality is one of the highest priorities of host and refugee communities, and it's urgent for achieving a sustainable development and reconstruction of home and host countries. The risk is that lowering the quality of education in Jordan will negatively impact the economic growth in the long run. According to a study

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carried out by the World Bank to study the impact of education quality on economic growth and focused on the developing countries; indeed the quality of education, rather than mere access to education, is what impacts economic growth (Hanushek , Wößmann, 2007) [3]. Overall, UNHCR cannot meet its mandate to provide high-quality refugee education with the current level of support and financial resources (Dryden-Peterson, 2011) [4]. It's for sure, that the education services provided for Syrian refugees as well as the quality of education are less than what's provided for nationals at the host communities. But, the education's outcome they get in Jordan is equal or slightly better than the average in their own country before the civil war (Christophersen, 2015) [5]. In addition, their enrollment (access to education) in Jordan is way higher than at the other 2-top hosting countries: Lebanon and Turkey; see Table 2.1 for more details. Add to the aforementioned, that their enrollment in Jordan is higher than the international average (Dryden-Peterson, 2011) [4].

Up to this point, there is no study which has evaluated the causal impact of the crisis on the quality of education in Jordan. In other words, previous studies just claimed that there is an impact on the quality of education imposed by the crisis, but they didn't calculate or evaluate this casual impact. Most of the previous studies have used a qualitative approach (focus-group work), and focused on the quality of education provided for refugees. However, some of them also talked about the crisis impact on the quality of education for nationals (using only a qualitative methodology, without measuring the casual impact). But, they were mostly talking about the current and future impact of the crisis on the education system in Jordan, and it's clear that overcrowded or double-shift schools are more likely to provide less quality than the regular shift and uncrowded schools; that's due to a higher teacher-student ratio or time reduction in the case of double-shift operating manner. Therefore, the GOJ with immense efforts from the international community has been savvy to reduce this impact and stop its causes. Nevertheless, no one talked about the sake of fixing the damage which has been caused during the period between 2012 and 2015, and the damage which might happen at the schools which operate on (double-shift)*. In which, it might cause a huge gap in the long-run between the students at the affected host communities and their peers at the other unaffected areas. Thus, GOJ and the international community should find out better ways to enroll all refugee students to the education system in Jordan, but without affecting the quality of education for the national students. Also, to remedy the damage that has been caused by enrolling the refugees, particularly between the

* Double shift school is a type of school which operates in two shifts, with one

group of students in the building early in the day and the second group of students later in the day. The purpose of a double shift school is to increase the number of students that can be taught at the same school. In Jordan, there are around 200 schools were forced to run on double-shift to enroll more Syrian students.1

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years 2012 and 2015; as well as to make sure that the students who attend the double-shift schools gain as good-quality as their peers in regular-shift schools.

The contribution of this study is based on a secondary data from previous researches, and some primary available data collected by interviews with administrators at MOE, NCHRD, MOPIC, RDFSC and QRCETI. Also, some chats with student's households in the affected areas. At the beginning, the purpose was to collect quantitative data from MOE and MOPIC. But then, it was even better to have the opportunity and talk to people at other institutions such as NCHRD, QRCETI, and RDFSC. The majority of the interviewees have confirmed that up to this point no study has been carried out to measure the causal impact of the crisis on education. That's because designing and carrying out such a quantitatively- based study is really difficult due to many reasons: designing reliable control groups; the available quantitative data don't reflect the real image of the impact due to many reforms in the

education system in Jordan; the impact of such problem usually takes time to be noticeable or even measurable, as well as that the quality of education is affected by many internal and external factors. One example to support the above is that the crisis has increased poverty; therefore this will lead to increase in brain drains. But, using only quantitative data shows that the average brain-drain ratio out of MOE in the last five years is less than before the year 2010. That's because the Gulf States have cut down the work permissions for Jordanian teachers and replaced them by Syrians in order to help them after the crisis. But, if you use a qualitative approach, you will find out that the teachers in Jordan are less motivated than any time before and more willingly to leave at any available opportunity (MOE, 2017)**.

This study like many previous studies which carried out surveys with students, teachers, parents of students, administrators and policy makers; have confirmed that there is a significant impact of the crisis on education, and it's more qualitative than quantitative. All of these factors which have aggravated because of the conflict in Syria such as overcrowding, double-shift schools, poverty increase, school's infrastructure destruction, mixing students with divergent skills and the psychosocial impact on the vibe of the classrooms; have affected the quality of education in Jordan, and declined the progress of education's advancement that the country aspire. The study added that the international intervention regarding refugee education will create a multi-tier education system in Jordan again, particularly if the international organizations carry on in the same approach (providing support only to refugee education). This paper is structured as follows: Challenges of Education in Jordan, International Organizations and Refugee Education, Quality of Education and Multi-tier Education System, The Importance of Education to Jordan, Findings and Discussions, and finally the Conclusion. ** Meeting with Khalil Abu Shehab, HR department at MOE-Amman.

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1.2 Challenges of Education in Jordan

Jordan is a small country in the heart of the Middle East. It has limited natural resources and is highly dependent on imports, particularly oil and foodstuffs. Nevertheless, Jordan is classified as a country of high human development by the 2014 Human Development Report (UNDP, 2014) [6]. Education is the most valuable resource to generate income and foster the economic growth in the country. The majority of Jordanian families consider that their children's education is the biggest investment for their future, "Investing in Our Children, Investing in Our Future", HM King Abdullah II (PETRA | King issues 7th discussion paper 2017) [7]. Despite Jordan has limited resources, but it has succeeded to develop a highly advanced national curriculum, and many other nations in the region have developed their education system using Jordan as a model. For many years, Jordan ranks number one in the Arab World in education (HRK "German Rectors' Conference", 2013) [8]. Its education system is meeting the international standards and its secondary education program "Tawjihi" is accepted in many world-class universities. In 2008, the World Bank has ranked the Jordanian education system as the best one among Arab states in terms of the educational outcomes (The World Bank, 2008) [9].

Moreover, Jordan has been the highest overall performing Arab country in the international assessments like PISA and TIMSS until the year 2015 (Tweissi and Abulibdeh, 2016) [10]. As a consequence, the Jordanian education system has become an example of successful and progressive change that many countries in the region wish to emulate (MOE, 2003) [11]. In addition, this reputation always has been the main driver to attract foreign students to enroll in the Jordanian higher education institutions. In the academic year 2014/2015, foreign students accounted around 12 percent of the undergraduates' students registered at the Jordanian universities (MOHE, 2015) [12]. Add to the aforementioned that the good level of education for Jordanians has helped the country out to receive flows of remittances from expats abroad, particularly in the Gulf States. According to the AMF statistics in 2010, Jordan was the third biggest recipient of remittances among all Arab countries after Egypt and Lebanon (Al-Assaf and Al-Malki, 2014) [13].

However, recently the education system in Jordan is facing many challenges. In which they might undermine its progress compared with the regional and international education systems. The Syrian crisis caused highly overcrowded classes in the host communities, in which overcrowding in 2014 was about 47 percent. Also, in order to make more classroom space available, around 200 Jordanian public schools are operating on double-shift in the academic year 2016/2017 (UNICEF, 2016) [14]. These two serious issues are exacerbated due to receiving large numbers of refugees that continue to arrive from neighboring Syria, following a previous influx of Iraqis and Palestinians, as well as the large and growing size of the country’s student body. The refugee crisis is putting a growing pressure on resources, and straining the whole education system in the country (Oxford Business Group, 2013) [15]. In 2017, around 220,000 Syrian students

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attended school in Jordan, and this is equivalent to about 15 percent of all students in the country. Syrian crisis forced the government of Jordan to shift some of the education's budget to other activities in order to accommodate the crisis. The Government only allocates 11% of its budget for education, but according to UN Jordan should allocate one-fourth of its budget to education. However, donors are providing some support to help the kingdom bear the additional education costs, but the level of their support is insufficient and still less than the required cost in the last three years (Culbertson, 2016) [16].

The performance of the Jordanian education system is declining since the 2010. Recently, in the last two sessions of TIMSS which were held in 2011 and 2015, the results were disappointing. Jordan's ranking has deteriorated in the last two cycles in the International Mathematics and Science Assessment, for students at the eighth grade (- 6% progress). In PISA session which was held in 2012, the Jordanian students' average in mathematics was among the lowest of all the participating countries (Tweissi and Abulibdeh, 2016) [10]. Again in 2015, a random sample of students at age 15 in Jordan has participated in PISA. Among 56 countries have participated, results showed that Jordan was on the list of the last ten countries. Moreover, in the same year, only 60 percent of the students at the secondary level have participated in the General Secondary Examination "Al-Tawjihi", of whom only 40 percent passed (HM Queen Rania Al-Abdullah, 2016) [17].

Despite the impressive progress of the education system in Jordan, but it still needs to overcome some of the persistent challenges. These challenges are divided into two parts: indigenous challenges and exogenous challenges. Many of the endogenous challenges are existed before receiving waves of refugees from different neighboring Arab countries, meanwhile the rest of them are indirectly linked to the refugee crises. Most of the endogenous challenges are existed due to economic conditions, and the rest are related to the national curriculum in the country. Firstly, the main endogenous challenges are discussed below in more details. Secondly, the exogenous challenges which are directly linked to the refugee crises will be discussed in the following section.

The mismatch between education's outcomes and labor market: there is a real mismatch between the education's outcomes and the market needs in Jordan, particularly for jobs need vocational training and hands-on skills. The GOJ hiring practices have typically placed a premium on diplomas over actual skills, influencing educational outcomes and contributing to skill mismatches. "One of the main reasons for youth unemployment is a mismatch between the output of education and vocational training with market demands", said Rana Turk, a country director at IYF (ILO, 2014) [18]. The rate of youth unemployment in Jordan is one of the highest in the world, not only in the Middle East. Unemployment rate reached 14.6 percent in the first quarter of 2016, which is the highest value since eight years (Obeidat, 2016) [19]. The quantitative approach in education is no longer acceptable, because in this century quality of education is the matter.

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Despite Jordan has an advanced curriculum compared with the regions' countries. But it seems that the focus of this curriculum was more theoretical and quantitative than practical and qualitative.

Recently, the international assessment programmes like PISA and TIMMS came in a place to prove to Jordan's policy makers that more emphasizing on critical and creative thinking, as well as problem-solving skills should be given. Also, there is a need to have the right linking of the subject's contents to real-life experiences. In the last PISA session which was held in 2015, Jordan was on the list of the last ten countries among 56 countries have participated from all over the world. Reforming the curriculum is a pressing national necessity in order to keep track with the other advanced education systems over the globe. Accordingly, the Ministry of Education has realized that the reformation and development process of the school curriculum is urgent. Therefore, in October 2016, the ministry has introduced some amendments in order to start reforming the curriculum (Ammon News, 2016) [20]. In other words, there is a great revolution in the education sector in Jordan started by late 2016. Recently, in April 2017, his Majesty King Abdullah II in his seventh Discussion Paper, titled “Developing Human Resources and Education Imperative for Jordan’s Progress”, said that developing education is the most rewarding investment, noting that every Jordanian is entitled to an opportunity to pursue a "good education".

Outdated teaching methodologies, lack of teachers’ training and brain drains: In harmony with his Majesty King Abdullah II vision in making Jordan the regional technology hub and an active player in the global economy. The Jordanian Ministry of Education has introduced the computers to most of the country schools in early 2001. The country stands as one of the first MENA countries to have put the investments in information and communication technologies in schools: equipping all public schools with computers and Internet connections (The World Bank, 2008) [9]. In addition, the Ministry is now making it mandatory for students to be computer literate and able to apply their studies in computers to their regular studies, most especially the scientific and mathematical courses. Even though, Jordan has early realized the importance of technology use in their education process. But currently, the Jordanian education system was outperformed by some countries in the region, and many countries in the world. Some of these countries, who outperformed Jordan in education, had a very similar situation to it in terms of resources and human development index. Moreover, some countries in the region were way outperformed by the Jordanian education system; meanwhile nowadays they topped the list of the best education systems in the Middle East region.

The economic situation in the country is the main reason behind this slow progress of technology use in teaching, as well as the lack of teachers' training. Yet, a lot of the Jordanian teachers lack the right training, and they do rely on the traditional ways of teaching they have had experienced when they were students. Another problem is that many of them don't transfer the knowledge which they receive from the training programs to their classrooms. Some of the training

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directors at the Ministry have confirmed that the majority of teachers don't apply the training goals in the classroom. In addition that a lot of the qualified teachers in the country move to work abroad, particularly in the Gulf States due to the higher wages they gain there compared with what they gain in Jordan. According to the MENA development Report, Jordan is one of the top-performing countries in MENA region and it has a relatively better evaluation and monitoring in public schools. The same report also has confirmed that the country has the best education outcomes in the region (The World Bank, 2008) [9]. Eventually, the Jordanian teachers are considered among the best teachers in the region. This has helped them out to have a good reputation, as well as to be a preferable choice for many Gulf States. On average, each year more than 1500 teachers leave the Ministry of Education to work abroad; most of them are very qualified compared with the teachers who stay in the country (MOE, 2017)*. Furthermore, the majority of the Jordanian teachers are less motivated than any time before. They have a feeling that their salaries are less than their peers in other ministries and public institutions. Also, many of them have chosen this career just because it was the only possibility to get hired in the country. Therefore, QRTA was launched under the patronage of HM Queen Rania Al Abdullah in June 2009 in partnership with Teachers College (TC) of Columbia University, and the Columbia University Middle East Research Center (CUMERC). In October 2016, the Ministry and QRTA have launched the QRTA’s Pre-Service Professional Diploma Program, in order to train the teachers for one year before they start their career.

1.3 Challenges Linked to Refugee Crises

These are the challenges which have been brought or exacerbated by hosting refugees from Palestine, Iraq and Syria. Some of these challenges are directly affecting the education system in the country; meanwhile, the rest has a long-term indirect impact on it. Here below, the main challenges which directly affect the education system are discussed in more details, followed by the challenges which have an indirect impact on the education system.

Overcrowded classrooms: overcrowding is not a recent phenomenon in the Jordanian education system. The system has experienced this phenomenon many times due to receiving an influx of Palestinian and Iraqi refugees many years before the Syria crisis. But the problem is way exacerbated due to receiving such a huge number of refugees from Syria. According to some national estimates, "Jordan is currently hosting around 1.4 million Syrian refugees", said HM King Abdullah II (Sanchez, 2017) [21]. Overcrowded started for the first time after Palestinians started to arrive in Jordan. Most Palestinian ancestors came to Jordan as Palestinian refugees between 1947 and 1967. In 2008, the Minority Rights Group International estimated that about 3 million residing in Jordan have Palestinian origin; of whom more than 70 percent are registered as refugees (UNRWA, 2015) [22]. Nowadays, the majority of Palestinians and their

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descendants in Jordan are fully naturalized, making Jordan the best Arab country to fully integrate the Palestinian refugees of 1948.

Accordingly, the education system in Jordan has experienced the overcrowding phenomenon during the peak influx of Palestinians who came to Jordan between 1947 and 1967. Firstly, it was so difficult for the Jordanian education system to accommodate all of their children in its schools. But, the Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), which was created in December 1949, had a major role in helping Jordan to enroll around 30 percent of the Palestinian refugees' children in their own schools. Currently, UNRWA has 174 schools in different Jordanian cities, and they provide education for 118,546 refugees' students. The governorates which hosted a significant population of the Palestinian refugees are Amman, Zarqa, Irbid, Jerash and Balqa (UNRWA, 2015) [22].

At the time when the Jordanian education system was trying to recover from the onus of hosting the Palestinians in Jordan; the first wave of Iraqi refugees started to arrive at the kingdom in the 1990s in the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War. After 1995, Iraqis increasingly were heading to Jordan to either settle there, or to use the country as a transit base to other countries. The majority of those refugees were upper-middle class like doctors and engineers, and some of them were lower-middle class and settled in Jordan, as their poverty couldn't help them to have the financial means to emigrate. The fact is that most of the pre-2003 migrants had sold their properties in Iraq and left their country with large amounts of cash, this meant that they aren't planning to back to Iraq. Accordingly, a very significant inflation started in Jordan, the prices of real estates, services and goods have increased noticeably. However, the Iraqis didn't cause a direct impact on overcrowding at the public schools in Jordan, as the majority of their children enrolled at the private sector. But this had led to an indirect impact on overcrowding in the public schools due to the increase in the private education fees. So that, many Jordanian students have been forced to leave their private schools and go to the public ones due to the economic conditions, in other words, a lot of them were replaced by Iraqi students.

Again, after the 2003 invasion, the second wave of Iraqis came to Jordan. Their demographics were similar to those of the first wave. Many of them were businessmen and former government officials who brought with them a lot of cash and great potential for investments. This influx of cash helped out to boost the Jordanian economy, but also fueled the inflation and wage shortages, which aggravated existing inequalities. Moreover, this second wave of Iraqis had a very tough impact on the Jordanian middle-class society, in which it was the start of declining this class in the country. Prices of real estate's doubled at many areas in the country and tripled at some other areas too. The same was for the private education fees, but this time they went up more aggressively than at the first time. This really caused another strong wave of overcrowding at the public schools in the country, especially in Amman the capital of Jordan, as most of Iraqis reside there.

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Jordan had taken in roughly more than 700,000 Iraqi refugees since the war began, in which they accounted more than 7% of the Jordanian population (Weiss Fagen, 2009) [23].

The Jordanian education system has reached his peak performance among Arab states in 2008 and 2009. The World Bank has confirmed this by ranking Jordan as the best education system among Arab states in 2008. Until the end of 2011, the Jordanian education system got very close to meet the OECD international standards of overcrowding at schools (number of students per m2). The international standard suggests having one student for each 1.2 m2 of the classroom area. In OECD countries, the average class size at the lower secondary level is 23. In the year 2010, average of overcrowding in Jordan was around 25 students per each classroom; however, the ratio was one student for each m2 (MOE, 2017)*. Unfortunately, the world biggest humanitarian crisis since World War II came out in March 2011. Syrian authorities responded with force to anti‐government protests, eventually leading to the outbreak of an extensive civil war across the country. In 2016, the United Nations (UN) identified that 13.5 million Syrians requiring humanitarian assistance, of which more than 6 million are internally displaced within Syria, and over 4.8 million are refugees outside of Syria (BBC News, 2016) [24]. The majority of Syrian refugees have moved into three neighboring countries: Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan. In Jordan, Amman, Irbid and Zarqa are the main cities which hosted the majority of Palestinian refugees and they are the cities with the highest number of inhabitants in Jordan.

Due to poor Jordanian planning at the beginning of the crisis, again the majority of Syrian refugees have come to reside in these three main cities, also in Mafraq which host a significant population of Syrian refugees and has the fifth-biggest refugee camp in the world, Zaatari Camp (Refugee Council USA, 2016) [25], see Table 1.3 for more details about Syrian population in Jordan. This high influx of Syrian refugees into these cities has put a great pressure on the education system and infrastructure in the hosting communities. Eventually, this led to highly overcrowded classes in these communities, overcrowding during 2014 is about 47 percent (Whitman, 2015) [26]. The refugee crisis which aggravated during the years between 2012 and 2015 put a huge pressure on resources, and overburdened the whole education system in the country. Overcrowding, which has increased to its peak values between 2012 and 2015, have caused another problem in mixing students with divergent skills, different educational backgrounds and disparate level of qualifications.

Mixing the Syrian students with the Jordanian ones has affected the quality of education provided for the national students. Before the crisis in Syria, the Jordanian education system way outperforms the Syrian's one in many measures. * Data from Planning Department, EMIS DIVISION- MOE, 2017.

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For example, in 2012 literacy rate for adults (people ages 15 and above) was almost 98 percent in Jordan, meanwhile, it was 85 percent in Syria. Another example, despite the difficult education's situation Syrian students face in their camps in Jordan, but their education's outcome as the same as or even slightly better than the average of education's outcome in their own country before the war (Christophersen, 2015) [5]. Moreover, mixing the refugee students with the nationals has also affected the vibe of the classrooms, many refugee students have experienced trauma and they are accommodated under bad conditions. That's what made it difficult for the teachers to deal with them and prevented them from being fully integrated. In addition, the majority of them come from poor households, and they are not really motivated. Also, overcrowded classes are not only a school phenomenon, but some universities witnessed the same phenomenon too. Add to that, hosting such a huge number of Syrians at the Jordanian schools, it has increased the infrastructure-destruction ratios to be more than doubled or tripled at some schools.

Also, the ongoing refugee crisis and the bad conditions under which refugees accommodated and treated in their host communities has led to a feeling of discontent toward the world and these host communities. Eventually, their sense of responsibility toward the infrastructure in these host communities is very low.

Double-shift schools: in order to make more classrooms space available, many Jordanian schools started to run on double shifts. Yet, around 200 of the country's schools are operating on double-shift in the academic year 2016/2017. This enrolled more students, but it lowered the quality of education for both Jordanian and Syrian students at these schools compared with their peers at the other schools. Each class is shortened, less time to do exercises and rest between classes. Moreover, a lot of teachers at these schools were teaching both shifts for almost two semesters, therefore their performance and energy at classes has been reduced during this period. Therefore, the Ministry hired new teachers to teach the second shift; meanwhile the administrative staff remained covering both shifts. Time reduction was necessary to keep classes short enough to operate the double shift, but it has resulted in a two-tier education system. In which, it has reduced the quality of education for Jordanian and Syrian students in double shift schools, and for Syrian students attending afternoon shifts in particular (Whitman, 2015) [26].

Poverty, dropouts and brain drains: these problems have existed in Jordan before the refugees from Palestine, Iraq and Syria have arrived in the country. Since 1989, Jordan has carried out several initiatives of economic reforms aimed to have a more stable economy as well as to manage the transition from a state-dominated model to one that is based on privatization and foreign investments. Jordan has experienced a significant economic growth from 2000 until 2007, but this growth has been undermined by the world's economic crisis which started by late 2007. Furthermore, this significant downward was only fully realized in 2010. Things have turned around to be better after 2010, but not for so long as the Syrian civil war started in the following year, and a huge influx of refugees started to

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arrive in Jordan in 2012, see Figure 1.3 for more details. The Syria crisis has increased poverty and unemployment ratios in the kingdom. Accordingly, Syrians have replaced many Jordanians in the labor market, particularly in the jobs which need low or vocational skills. The Ministry of Education has succeeded to reduce dropout ratios to lower values due to some legal procedures it has followed in coordination with other governmental entities. But when mixing the refugees' students with Jordanian students in the same classrooms between the years 2012 till 2015, this led to an increase of dropout ratios again due to the snowballing effect (QRCETI, 2017)*.

The Syria crisis has also increased brain drain phenomenon due to aggravation of poor economic conditions in the country, and fostered this feeling Jordanians already have that they should leave the country in order to enhance their economic conditions. This impact on brain drains was more qualitative than quantitative, as many countries in the Gulf region where Jordanians used work in have reduced the number of work permissions which are available for Jordanians; in order to have more Syrians to help them improve their economic conditions after the crisis in their own country.

In addition, the crisis has imposed a psychosocial impact in the host communities, mental trauma affects a large portion of Syrian refugees, whether forcibly displaced or not. A study which was carried out by the German Federal Chamber of Psychotherapists in 2015, estimated that half of the Syrian refugees in Germany had mental issues, with 70 percent witnessing violence and 50 percent having been victims of violence. What about the refugees in Jordan! Yet, it is estimated that only 5 percent of the needed psychotherapy for refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey is provided. Meanwhile, Turkish authorities reported that around 55 percent of Syrian refugees there need psychological services (Karasapan, 2016) [27]. The psychosocial impact which caused the loss of livelihoods, ruined social networks and diminished educational opportunities; has led to an increase in committing crimes, smoking and drugs addiction in Jordan. In which made the majority of Jordanians not pleased of having the refugees from Syria in their country, moreover, that they accounted 20 percent of the population in 2016.

* Meeting with Marwan Al-Turman at QRCETI; and Khattab Abulibdeh at NCHRD.

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Figure 1.3 Jordan GDP real growth rate (%), from 2000 to 2011

Source: CIA - Jordan in Numbers, August 2011

Table 1.3 Demographics of Syrian Population in Jordan; Total population in Jordan: 9,531,712

City Population Percentage of Syrians

Percentage of Syrians to Population

Amman 4,007,526 34 % 11 % Irbid 1,770,158 27.14 % 20 % Mafraq 549,948 16.43 % 38 % Zarqa 1364,878 13.85 % 13 % Other Cities 1,839,202 8.16 % 6 %

Source: DOS and UNICEF, General Population and Housing Census, 2015

2. International Organizations and Refugee Education

The right to education for refugees is articulated in Article 22 of the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, resolution 64/290 (July 2010) of the Human Rights Council of the United Nations General Assembly on the right to education in emergencies (UN, 2010) [28]. Refugee access to education is fundamental in both of short and long terms, not only for the refugees themselves but also for the stability of the countries they are residing in. Refugees for sure suffer a great hardship and trauma, but education is the solution which can give them the perseverance to persuade a better situation and to prepare for the day when they can resume a normal way of life back in their countries, or even at their host communities. Furthermore, education will help them supporting post-conflict reconstruction if and when refugees are able to return to their home countries in the future. At the refugees communities, refugee households and the international community emphasize that education is the key to the future. Despite not knowing what will happen tomorrow, education brings stability, hope and more sustainability.

The international organizations always have been playing a major role in responding to crises all over the world. The refugees' crises are among the most challengeable crises the international community face since they were been created. The majority of refugees' crises are long-term crises, which put a high

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pressure on the international community and the host communities in dealing with it. Education is the main pillar in reducing the impact of these crises on the refugees themselves and their host communities. However, the international organizations are providing huge efforts to respond to the refugees' crises, but they tended to place less value on education than refugees themselves. The funding available for refugees assistance programmes has become progressively tighter by the days. In other words, this has meant that the resources available for education support have declined (UNHCR, 2001) [29]. Education is a human right, and it has to be available in any situation, including crises. Furthermore, education should provide the skills that people need to reach their full potential and to exercise their other rights (INEE, 2010) [30]. But education can't fulfill this mission completely else if it is of high quality, available, accessible, acceptable, and adaptable (Tomaševski, 2001) [31]. Refugee education situation is poor and unacceptable in comparison with what should be provided. Access to education for refugees is limited and uneven across regions and settings of displacement, particularly for girls at secondary levels. Refugee education is generally of a very low quality, with ineffective indicators that focus on quantity rather than quality. Overcrowded classrooms full of students with divergent levels of education, teacher-pupil ratios average as high as 1:70 and, in many situations, teachers do not have even the ten days of training that would categorize them as “trained.” (Dryden-Peterson, 2011) [4]. UNHCR’s report finds that refugees are five times more likely to be out of school than the global average. Only 50 percent of refugee children have access to primary education, compared with a global average of more than 90 percent (UNHCR's Report, 2016) [32].

2.1 Syrian Refugee Education in Jordan

As mentioned before, the Syria crisis has imposed an extreme pressure on the Jordanian public institutions to deliver the basic services to an increasingly large number of vulnerable people. The Jordanian education system was merely able to accommodate the Palestinian and Iraqi refugees, as well as its growing student's body. But yet, it seems that the Syrian refugee students will be the straw that might break the camel's back. Despite all the obstacles for the Syrian school-aged children to access education in Jordan, and the limited resources Jordan has in its education system, but in 2015 only less than 16 percent of refugees were out of formal and informal education in Jordan. Meanwhile, in Lebanon and Turkey, this ratio is way bigger than in Jordan; accounted 66 percent in Turkey and 70 percent in Lebanon, see Table 2.1 for more details. Refugee enrolment in primary school is only 76% globally and drops dramatically to 36% at secondary levels, and it decrease to the half for girls (Dryden-Peterson, 2011) [4]. During the school year 2015-2016, enrollment for the Syrian school-aged children in the primary and secondary schools in Jordan was around 65 percent (Van Esveld, 2016) [2]. Accordingly, European Union, Germany, Norway, United Kingdom and the United States, together with UNICEF, grant JOD 57.7 million to GOJ to provide education to all children in Jordan in the 2016/2017 school year, as a result of the London

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Syria Conference (UNICEF, 2016) [14]. Another problem is that the integration of refugees into national education systems, particularly in urban areas where the majority of refugees are living is very difficult. Also, many Syrian students have difficulty accessing a curriculum that is different from their own. But yet, they are more likely to be integrated into the Jordanian education system than in the other education systems. The language is one of the biggest barriers to integrating Syrian students into Turkish schools, and in Lebanon too, as many subjects taught in French and English. Today, most Palestinians in Jordan are fully naturalized, making Jordan the only Arab country to fully integrate the Palestinian refugees of 1948 (Revolvy, 2014) [33]. Therefore, it will be easier for Syrian students to be integrated in the Jordanian education system as well, particularly if the international organizations enhance the provided education's support to their host communities.

Table 2.1 Numbers of Syrian school-aged children accessing education in the 3-top hosting countries

Country Have Access to Education Out of School Jordan 182,867 34,216 Lebanon 119,389 285,661 Turkey 200,500 394,049

Source: UNHCR, Regional Refugee and Resilience Plan 2015-2015: Regional Monthly Update May 2015

2.2 International Organizations Intervention

More than 21 million people around the world are living as refugees, and more than half of them are under the age of 18 (UNHCR, 2016) [34]. Three-quarters of those do not live in refugee camps, but in urban communities, profoundly altering the social fabric of cities in major host countries. Their survival depends on both regular outside assistance from humanitarian agencies and host country governments, as well as their own support structures such as social network ties. But, as the average duration of refugee status currently last more than ten years, this is definitely an unsustainable solution (Center for Global Development, 2017) [35]. According to the national census in 2015, the Syrian refugees in Jordan are more than 1,265,000 (DOS and UNICEF, 2016) [36]. Other national estimates claimed that there are around 1.4 million refugees from Syria in the kingdom, of whom only 664,118 are registered at UNHCR in 2016. The majority of those refugees live in poor neighborhoods in urban areas. Moreover, 90 percent of the registered Syrian refugees in urban areas are below the national poverty line, while more than 67% of families are living in debt (Richards, 2016) [37].

The international community represented by the international organizations has responded to the crisis in Syria in different approaches. The EU is the leading

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donor in the international response to support the provision of humanitarian assistance to Syrian refugees. Since the beginning of the crisis, the European Commission has contributed more than €657 million for Syrian refugees and host communities, including €271 million in humanitarian assistance (European Commission, January 2017) [38]. EU has been provided more than € 9.4 billion of total funding for relief and recovery assistance to Syrians inside the country and to refugees and their host communities in Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Turkey and Egypt (European Commission, March 2017) [39]. On the other hand, in late 2015, the total U.S. donation was $4.5 billion since the Syrian conflict began in 2011 (Morello, 2015) [40]. However, no one can deny the role which the international organizations played to respond to the Syria crisis, but it seems that the Middle East region needs way more support than what they have provided. The conflict between Israeli and Palestinians in the holy land; the crises and civil wars in Iraq, Syria and Yemen have brought out a lot of refugees and displaced people in the region and outside it. This put a huge onus on the international community and the international organizations to respond to all the refugee crises all over the world, particularly in the Middle East region. Despite Jordan is a small country with very limited resources, but it topped a list of ten countries which host more than half of the world’s refugees. Refugees from Palestine, Syria and Iraq accounted around half of the population in the country. Regarding the Syria crisis, at the beginning, the international community and the international organizations have considered it as a short-term crisis, so that, their support at the beginning was munificent. But by the mid of 2014, they have realized that the Syria crisis will be a long-term and very complicated problem. Eventually, their support has reduced to very low levels; which has put a huge pressure on Jordan's limited resources and forced the GOJ to bear the additional cost of hosting those refugees from its own budget.

The Government of Jordan only allocates 11% of its budget to education, but according to UN Jordan should allocate one-fourth of its budget to education. However, donors are providing a significant support to help the kingdom bear the additional education costs, but the level of their support still insufficient. UNICEF, for example, only received $17.07m by July 2014 for educational services for Syrian refugees out of $42.46m needed (Oxford Business Group, 2015) [41]. Around one-third of the Syrian students in Jordan have remained out of schools (formal-education) after the academic year 2015/2016. Accordingly, European Union, Germany, Norway, United Kingdom and the United States, together with UNICEF, grant JOD 57.7 million to GOJ to provide education to all children in Jordan in the 2016/2017 school year, (Syrian Conference in London, 2016). This commitment is to place an additional 50,000 Syrian children in formal education, without affecting the quality of education provided to Jordanian students. "The five donors have developed a joint vision to also strengthen the quality of the Jordanian education system and to expand its capacity – not only for Syrian refugees but for all children in Jordan", said the German Ambassador to Jordan, Ms. Siefker-Eberle (UNICEF, 2016) [14]. UNESCO, along with QRTA and the Education Ministry, implemented the "Emergency Support to Safeguard Education Quality for Syrian

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Students in Jordan". The 4.3 million euro project, funded by the European Union, aimed at “sustaining quality education” for both young Syrian refugees and Jordanians affected by the humanitarian crisis in Syria (The Jordan Times, 2014) [42]. See Table 2.2 for more details about the projects provided by donors and the international organizations to support education in Jordan, particularly in response to the Syria crisis.

As mentioned before, the international donors have supposed that the Syria crisis will not last for so long, therefore, their support has decreased significantly as soon as it was noticed that the Syria crisis will be a long-term one. Jordan’s “Syria Response Plan” budgeted additional costs for education at $249.6 million in 2016. However, after the Syria London conference in February 2016, it was agreed that 1 billion US$ is needed to support the education sector in Jordan over the next three years. In addition, the World Bank estimated that the Syria conflict cost Jordan $2.5 billion annually (Van Esveld, 2016) [2]. Moreover, the international support to help Jordan bearing with the crisis was decreased at all levels. For example, the World Food Program has cut out food vouchers for around half a million Syrian refugees in Jordan in July 2015. Also, many organizations and donors have stopped their support to Syrian refugees in getting accommodation in Jordan. Andrew Harper, head of the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) in Jordan said “If we are serious about international burden-sharing and trying to help those in need, then Jordan is doing the first step, the second, third and fourth steps, but at some point, it can’t do it alone.”He insisted that the international community needs to be part of the solution. He added, “The capitals around the world who are deploring what is going on [in Syria] should also step up with support,” and he finished saying. “We will see whether the rhetoric is hollow on the humanitarian front” (Andrew Harper, 2012) [43].

Jordan and donors are working together to improve the quality of education for all children in the country, this is in order to reduce intercommoned tensions. "Jordanian policymakers have recognized that it's in the country’s own best interest to ensure that Syrian children receive an education", (Van Esveld, 2016) [2]. Donors and the leading international organizations in the education sector like USAID, EU, UNDP, UNRWA, UNESCO, DFID and UNICEF have provided a lot of support and carried out a lot of projects in order to tackle the problem. They also have shifted their activities to give more focus on the qualitative approach than the quantitative one in this vital sector. USAID is the leading supporter of the education sector in Jordan, they have carried out a lot of initiatives to sustain the quality of education, enlarge the umbrella of the education sector to cover all the areas in the country and improve human development skills. They have constructed and revamped many schools in the country in order to reduce overcrowding, particularly at the host communities were a significant number of refugees reside. The major projects they have launched in the education sector to respond to the Syria crisis are mentioned below in Table 2.2.

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Table 4.2 Projects to support education in Jordan, especially after the Syria crisis

Title of The Project Funded By Budge

t Status Aim

Educate every child in Jordan in the 2016/2017 school year

EU, Germany, Norway, United Kingdom and the United States, Canada, together with UNICEF

57.5 Million JD

On-going

To place an additional 50,000 Syrian children in formal education, without affecting the quality of education provided to Jordanian students.

Second Education Reform for the Knowledge Economy

World Bank & Government of Jordan

408.00 Million US$

Finished

To provide students enrolled in pre-tertiary education institutions in Jordan with increased levels of skills to participate in the knowledge economy.

The Employer-Driven Skills Development Project

The European Union

35 Million €

Finished

To create a system of accreditation, and reforming the Vocational Training Corporation.

USAID NON-FORMAL EDUCATION PROGRAM

USAID 4.68 Million US$

On-going

Provide education to at least 1,680 out-of-school youth in Jordan.

SCHOOL CONSTRUCTION OVERVIEW

USAID On-going

New school construction, rehabilitation and expansion efforts focus on creating a child-centered learning environment that reduces overcrowding and minimizes barriers to access.

EARLY GRADE READING AND MATHEMATICS PROJECT (RAMP)

USAID 45 Million US$

On-going

By the end of the project, it is expected that approximately all 400,000 public school students in grades K2-G3 across Jordan will receive improved reading and math instruction, and 14,000 teachers will be trained.

LEARNING ENVIRONMENT: IMPROVED INFRASTRUCTURE PROGRAM (LEIIP)

USAID 35 Million US$

On-going

To improve student well‐being and school achievement through improving the physical infrastructure of the learning environment.

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Title of The Project Funded By Budge

t Status Aim

CULTIVATING INCLUSIVE & SUPPORTIVE LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS

USAID On-going

Over 6,900 books have been distributed to Model Community Schools to support authentic reading and expressive writing – a tool for teachers to enhance student engagement in the classroom and handle challenging behavioral problems.

Emergency Support to Safeguard Education Quality for Syrian Students in Jordan Project

UNESCO 4.3 Million €

On-going

Sustaining quality education for both young Syrian refugees and Jordanians affected by the humanitarian crisis in Syria. The project aims to help teachers to better deal with students in emergency situations. It includes developing a training of trainers program, preparing resource material as well as a teacher's guidebook.

Vocational Education and Training & Higher Education Programme for vulnerable Syrians and disadvantaged youth from host communities

The European Union

25 Million €

On-going

To provide vocational education, training and higher education programs for vulnerable Syrians and disadvantaged youth from host communities in Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey and Iraq.

Teacher Professional Development Project

MOE, QRTA, UNESCO, EU and Saudi Fund for Development

On-going

Developing resource materials for teacher training, preparing 500 MoE trainers and training 2000 public school classroom teachers with the knowledge and skills necessary to intervene on behalf of students who were struggling with the psycho-social trauma experienced by their forced displacement.

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3. Quality of Education and Multi-tier Education System

Education is one of the highest priorities of refugee communities. Currently, there is no big evidence of real organizational commitment by UNHCR to guaranteeing the right to education for refugee children at their host communities. Many obstacles are in the way of meeting education for all goals, particularly refugee education. High-quality education enables the refugees to have sustainable solutions, as well as help in reconstructing their home and host countries. This approach of providing good education to refugees is consistent with the fundamental mandate of UNHCR, but it does not align with current practice, particularly in relation to quality (Dryden-Peterson, 2011) [4]. Individual earnings vary with the level of human capital investment, also the value of human capital accumulation vary with the level of education provided for them. A worker with little human capital gets a low wage in order to accumulate more human capital, whereas a worker with much human capital gets a higher wage (Mankiw, Romer and Weil, 1992) [44]. The risk is that lowering the quality of education in Jordan will negatively impact the economic growth in the long run. According to a study carried out by the World Bank to study the impact of education quality on economic growth and focused on the developing countries; indeed the quality of education, rather than mere access to education, is what impacts economic growth (Hanushek , Wößmann, 2007) [3]. No doubt, that the quality of education provided to the majority of refugees at their host communities is always less than or equal to the quality provided to the nationals at these host communities. It also depends on the trauma they have experienced, and the bad conditions under which they are accommodated. Add to the aforementioned, the capabilities and infrastructures of their host communities to provide them with better services, particularly at a short notice.

But, this is not the case in Jordan. However, Syrian refugees have a lot of difficulties with education in Jordan like highly-overcrowded classrooms in their camps, and the majority of them are attending the second-shift at the host communities' schools, which are characterized by lower quality than the first-shift. But recently, a study carried out by the International Peace Institute stated that the Syrian refugees in Jordan have got better education outcomes overall compared to Syria. When compared to Syrian education statistics before the crisis, the results of the sample survey referred to above show that Syrian refugees in Jordan are on a par with or slightly better off than the national Syrian average before the crisis (Christophersen, 2015) [5]. Another evidence to confirm that refugees in Jordan have good quality of education or even better quality than the nationals at the public schools; is that Palestinian refugees at the UNRWA schools have better quality of education than students at the public schools in the country, as well as they have outperformed them in PISA and TIMSS international sessions. Furthermore, the majority of Iraqi refugees are attending private schools in Jordan,

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and these schools even outperformed the UNRWA and the public schools in PISA and TIMSS as well (NCHRD, 2017)*.

3.1 Multi-tier Education System

The refugee crises and the international intervention to respond to these crises have created a multi-tire education system in Jordan. Yet, the education system in Jordan contains four different layers, each one of them is characterized by a different level of quality of education provided to students. The lowest layer includes the Syrian students who attend schools in refugee camps and the second-shift in the public schools. The second one includes the national students who attend the public schools in the country. The third includes Palestinian refugee students at UNRWA schools, and the fourth includes students who attend private education institutions in Jordan. The problem is that the quality of education gap between students who attend public schools and who enrolled at the private ones is widening significantly. This gap has exacerbated due to receiving the second wave of Iraqi refugees who came to Jordan between 2003 and 2007. The majority of them enrolled at the private schools, which has forced many nationals to move from private schools to the public ones due to the inflation of private education fees. The international organizations have considered the Iraqis in Jordan as an economic opportunity, but they have forgotten their impact on the inflation of education, health, accommodation and other services cost in the country. Eventually, there were not enough programs carried out to remedy this damage Iraqis caused in the education system in widening the gap between the private and public education in the country.

The international organizations led by UNRWA, have provided the majority of their support to Palestinian refugees and their schools in Jordan. Better benefits, training and severance payment for their teachers, compared with teachers at the public schools. Also, better facilities and management provided at their schools, and the majority of their teachers are either satisfied or highly satisfied, in which it's not the case for teachers at the public schools (The World Bank, 2014) [45]. In the long-run, this has helped to create the second best layer of the education system in the country, even though the majority of UNRWA schools still operate on double-shift manner. Eventually, this led to better economic opportunities for their alumni in the long run, compared with the nationals at the public schools. There is a strong correlation between schooling and average earnings, in spite of the enormous variation in individual circumstances that sometimes clouds this fact. It's hard to generalize that more educated people earn more than less educated people, or that schooling causes earnings to increase. But better-educated workers earn

* Meeting with Khattab Abulibdeh, Researcher at NCHRD; they are responsible about International Assessments

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more and have better economic opportunities (Angrist and Pischke, 2008) [46]. Currently, the international community is focusing their support only on the Syrian refugee education. They have picked out the most qualified teachers and provided them with the right training to teach the Syrian refugees. At the moment, their education in Jordan is better than in the average in their country before the civil war. Again, in the long-run, this kind of intervention, will lead to the same result happened at UNRWA schools, and the nationals at the public schools are always the main losers in this multi-tier education system.

3.2 Quality of Education In the absence of oil, gas and other natural resources, education with high

quality is a must. Education must be prepared to both current and future needs and linked to the social and economic development of the country. The quality approach in education is more important to achieve the desired results (MOE, 2006). Due to having a highly-competitive business environment, yet the education term mostly refers to the quality. The advanced and well-developed education system is no longer measured by how many engineers and doctors graduate every year. High human capital accumulation leads to higher individual earnings, thus higher saving rate. Yet, according to the Solow model, the higher the rate of saving, thus the richer the country (Mankiw, Romer and Weil, 1992) [44]. Eventually, this shows a strong relationship between the quality of education and human capital accumulation, therefore this will impose a positive impact on the economic growth. The education system in Jordan always has been the main generator which moved the country to be in a better situation than the majority of developing countries. That's why sustaining quality of education is among the country's highest priorities. The Jordanian education system is facing many challenges; the Syria crisis came in a place to be the major challenge which could undermine the progress of education advancement that the country was pursuing. The Syria crisis has affected the whole education system in the country, particularly the Jordanian students who study in around 200 schools which were forced to run on double-shift in order to reduce the overcrowding and to make more room to host more refugee students. These schools have around 15 percent of the student's body in the country, and the majority of these schools used to have very good students compared with the average of the country, as most of them are located in urban areas (MOE, 2017)*.

* Meeting with Amira Kiwan, head of planning department at MOE-Irbid, 1st Area; Also, data from general education department at MOE-Amman.

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3.3 Overcrowding

Overcrowding has exacerbated between the years 2012 and 2015 due to receiving influx of Syrian refugees in Jordan. This has affected the majority of students in the public schools, particularly the poor and lower-middle-class students. One study about the impact of overcrowding on education in Pakistan revealed that overcrowding can have a direct impact on learning. Teachers are most likely to be successful in teaching small classes because they are easier to handle and manage (Shah, 2012) [47]. Another study in the same country proved that the effective teaching was not possible in overcrowded classes and the majority of the teachers were facing instructional, discipline, physical and evaluation problems (Khan and Iqbal, 2012) [48]. The international donors have provided immense efforts to reduce overcrowding by operating many schools in the country on double-shift, and the construction of new schools. After the year 2015, overcrowding caused by Syrian students has reduced to very low levels.

Nevertheless, those students who experienced this problem of attending overcrowded classrooms, definitely the quality of education value they have received is less than what their peers received at other un-overcrowded schools for that period. Therefore, some programs to remedy this damage and to help them catch up with their peers should be launched. However, the Ministry of Education with an appreciated support from the international donors has stopped many other reasons which affect the quality of education in the country because of the Syria crisis. For example, same teachers to cover both shift for almost one year and mixing students of divergent skills in the same classroom are no longer exist, also they helped out to cope with schools infrastructure destruction. But, again no programs to remedy the damage caused during the periods of having these problems.

3.4 The Tradeoff between Overcrowding and Double-shift Schools

Teaching in an overcrowded classroom can be frustrating, overwhelming, and stressful. Having so many students in the same classroom, make it hard for the teacher to be able to have one-on-one interaction with students that need assistance. There is a trickle-down effect that has a tremendous negative impact on the quality of education that even the most effective teachers can provide their students (Meador, 2016) [49]. Overcrowding has an impact on the economy, a lower pupil-teacher ratio in primary school increases the impact of education on the economic growth (The World Bank, 2008) [9]. On the other hand, the students who attend the double-shift schools might have a lower quality of education compared with their peers, due to the time reduction and the increase of school's infrastructure destruction. Double-shift schools certainly may suffer educational disadvantages compared with single-shift schools. Teaching time for each shift may be reduced, and the need to compress a lot of activities into a short time may make the school day rather tense (Bray, 2008) [50]. Children at schools operating two shifts receive

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fewer hours of instruction than children at other public schools operating on a regular schedule. This operating manner enrolled more students but lowered the quality of education. Each class is shortened, less time to do exercises and rest between classes. Time reduction was necessary to keep classes short enough to operate the double shift but has resulted in a two-tier education system at the public schools. This has reduced the quality of education for Syrian and Jordanian students in double shift schools, and for Syrian students attending afternoon shifts in particular (Van Esveld, 2015) [51].

However this operating manner (double-shift) might affect the quality of education, but many policy makers at the Ministry of Education have confirmed that this solution has less impact on the quality than overcrowding. They added that the majority of UNRWA schools are operating on this manner instead of having overcrowded classrooms, and they even outperformed the public schools which operate on a single-shift. Although, operating on double-shift is better than having overcrowded classrooms, but this is not the best of what can be done. Teaching the Syrian refugees is not only an international priority, but it's a humanitarian commitment. From a humanitarian point of view, it's better if we all suffer a little than any of us have to suffer a lot (Sinek, 2014)*. Therefore, if there is no choice to enroll the Syrian students in Jordan without operating on double-shift, and lowering the quality of education for its nationals, then definitely Jordan will go for it. Hopefully, the international community will follow into Jordan's footsteps and provide better education and support for both Jordanian and refugees students in the country.

4. The Importance of Education in the Case of Jordan

Due to the political, economic and social crisis in the Middle East countries in the last few decades; it has been increasingly recognized that education has a crucial role in creating sustainable development due to its economic, social, political and environmental returns. Jordan's economy is among the smallest in the Middle East with insufficient supplies of water, oil, and other natural resources, which underlying the government's heavy reliance on foreign assistance (Jordan Economy Profile, 2016). This has created a sort of strong correlation between education and the economic development in the country, in comparison with the majority the Middle East countries. The second Millennium Development Goal is often interpreted as only sending more children to school, but the well developed and effective educational strategy should thus focus on maintaining or enhancing the quality of schooling. The accumulation of human capital varies with the level * Simon O. Sinek is a British/American author, motivational speaker and marketing consultant. He is the author of three books including the 2009 best seller Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action.

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of education they get. A higher value of human capital ensures more earning, thus a higher rate of saving. Accordingly, a higher rate of saving leads to a positive impact on the economic growth (Mankiw, Romer and Weil, 1992) [44]. King ABDALLAH, during the first decade of the 2000s, implemented significant economic reforms, such as expanding foreign trade and privatizing state-owned companies that attracted foreign investment and contributed to an average annual economic growth of 8% for 2004 through 2008. Then, the world economic crisis caused a global economic downturn, the Great Recession by late 2008. Although in 2011, the Jordanian economy started to recover from the impact of this world financial crisis. But unfortunately, the world's biggest refugee crisis has come out to force around 2 million Syrians to flee to Jordan by January 2017. The crisis has forced the progressive trend of economic growth in the country to hold back. The sudden influx of large numbers of people increased competition for jobs, overburdened infrastructure and strained social services, such as healthcare and education. Also, it has exacerbated the water scarcity problem the country is facing since many decades.

Without the Syria crisis, the expected annual growth rate for 2013 was 4 percent instead of 3 percent (Abdih and Geginat, 2014) [52]. This translates into a cumulative loss of incomes close to what Jordan received in budget grants last year, so it is not easy to dismiss. Inflation rose mainly due to an increase in rental prices as many Syrian families needed accommodation in Jordan. Without the crisis, rents last year would have grown by 2.7 percent instead of 7.7 percent (Abdih and Geginat, 2014) [52]. Furthermore, the deterioration of Jordan’s trade balance is a direct consequence of the crisis. Due to the conflict in Syria, Jordan lost its major trade route, on which it depended for transit trade to Turkey, Lebanon and Europe.

As a consequence the country has had to resort to more expensive alternative routes, hurting export price competitiveness. Indeed, combined exports to Lebanon, Turkey, and Europe dropped by 30 percent in 2013 (Abdih and Geginat, 2014) [52]. In addition, cheap imports from Syria had to be substituted from elsewhere at higher costs. Add to the aforementioned, that the crisis has led to a 25% decline in agricultural exports to Syria and a 30% decline in agricultural imports from Syria, which translates into losses for Jordanian farmers and additional costs for traders. The problem is also that the majority of Syrian refugees who flew to Jordan were among the poorest people who left their country, in which two out of three refugees live below the poverty line (European Parliament, 2017) [53]. In 2016, the additional costs for refugee education in Jordan are around $249.6 million. According to MOE, the average cost of each Syrian student in the country is between 1,100 to 1,200 JOD (MOE, 2017)*. As mentioned before, the World Bank estimated that the Syria conflict cost Jordan $2.5 billion annually, and Jordan still

* Meeting with Hisham Abo Khashabeh, Planning Department at MOE.

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didn't receive two-third of this cost (MOPIC, 2017)**. According to the Jordan Response Platform for the Syria Crisis, Jordan has Received 60 Percent of London Conference Pledges (JRPSC, February 2017).

4.1 Education

Education has a crucial role in fostering the sustainable development and economic growth. It always has been the basic pillar of developing other sectors, as well as formulating the human capital which is the biggest asset for any country in the world. But in the case of Jordan, education has a particular situation. It's the attribute which gives the country an excellence over many other countries in the Middle East, and better economic situation than many developing countries in the world. However, in the 21st century, the world experienced a highly-speed globalization and technology boom, afterward the quantitative model of education has become insignificant. Yet, quality of education is the matter. Education without quality provides only consumers; meanwhile, the quality of education is the tool to introduce the new technologies and technical innovation into the societies. Education with good quality is urgent to prepare youths who are well trained and skilled to face the world's formidable challenges, particularly poverty and unemployment.

Entrepreneurship is a key driver of the economy. Wealth and a high majority of jobs are created by small businesses started by entrepreneurially minded individuals (Jerinabi and Santhi, 2012) [54]. Education is the heart of entrepreneurship and the bedrock to any economic excellence. The rate of youth unemployment in Jordan is one of the highest in the world. Accordingly, the quality of education and entrepreneurship has a great potential to tackle this massive problem. Entrepreneurship and innovation programs are crucial to train youth who are innovative and self-reliant, in order to make them employers of labor rather than adding them to the statistics of unemployed graduates. Recently, the education systems in many neighboring countries are progressing steadily, but this is not the case in Jordan.

The international assessments programmes like PISA and TIMSS came in a place to prove that the quality of education in the country is declining. They have forced the country to look at its education curricula in a way that more focus on quality than quantity should be given. Problem-solving, creativity, innovation and cognition in daily life are the new features which shaped the advanced educational systems internationally. Therefore, it's urgent for Jordan to start serious educational reforms in order to catch up with the leading education systems, as well as to maintain their high-rank among the Middle East countries.

** Meeting with Osama Al-Qaysi, The Financial Department at MOPIC.

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4.2 Remittances and Foreign Students

Remittances play an increasingly important role in the international economic relations between countries which are labor exporting, and richer countries which are labor scarce (Russell, 1986) [55]. They are considered as an important and semi-stable source of external flows to Jordan over many decades. They are an important source for developing and enhancement the economic stability, through providing an extra income to the families that benefited from these transfers. In addition, the lack of capital inflows in developing countries, particularly Jordan, makes remittances an important factor, in place of having foreign capital and hard currencies. Jordan is considered as one of the top-ten developing countries with high received remittances as a percentage of GDP. According to a World Bank report, Jordan has received $3.8 billion from Jordanian expatriates in 2015; this makes Jordan the fourth country in the region in terms of the volume of remittances. Jordanian workforces have characterized by high quality and have a high reputation in the region especially in the Gulf States. Eventually, education with higher quality among Middle East countries, will boost this reputation, and benefit the economy from increased remittances from Jordanians working abroad. Moreover, quality of education always has been the main driver to attract foreign students to enroll in the Jordanian higher education institutions. They accounted around 12 percent of the undergraduates' students registered at Jordanian universities in the academic year 2014/2015 (MOHE, 2015) [12].Those students are an important source of income to the country's universities and small businesses, through spending money on tuition fees, accommodation, food and tourism. Last but not least, an advanced education system will increase this percentage of foreign students in the country. Also, a high-quality education system will be more able to attract foreign investments to the country and diversify its economy. At the end, education with better quality will foster the political stability in the country and reduce extremism. Especially that the Middle East region is facing a challenging period which is so-called Arab spring, as well as the world currently is passing through an unprecedented extremism wave.

5. Findings and Discussions

The Syria crisis has a significant impact on Jordan since its start in March 2011. The crisis itself has impacted the Jordanian economy and all the country's sectors. Meanwhile, the high influx of Syrian refugees into Jordanian cities has put a great pressure on the infrastructure and services in refugee-hosting communities. All the interviewees at the Jordanian public institutions have confirmed that the refugee crisis which aggravated during the years between 2012 and 2015 has imposed a huge pressure on resources, and overburdened the whole education system in the country. The education's budget in Jordan is even less than what it should be according to the UN, moreover, the crisis has forced the GOJ to shift some of this budget to cope with the additional cost of hosting those refugees. They

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said that the crisis has impacted the quality of education provided for Jordanian students, particularly at the overcrowded schools in host communities and schools which run on double-shift. The majority of them have confirmed that schools to be running on double-shift have less impact on quality than having overcrowded classrooms. They have cited that by UNRWA schools in Jordan to support this assumption, as the majority of their schools are running on double-shift, and the quality of education there is higher than at the public schools. But, that's due to the higher support they receive compared with the public-school system in Jordan. In addition, they mentioned that the MOE policies were savvy enough to reduce the impact of the crisis to lower levels. For example, they hired new teachers to teach the second shift instead of having same teachers for both shifts, as they quickly noticed that this strategy will significantly affect the quality of education in schools which run on double-shift. In addition, very qualified teachers were selected for this second-shift. But, the administrators are still covering both shifts, as well as the workload has increased for all the employees at the MOE offices due to receiving a lot of Syrian families trying to enroll their children or deal with their administrative stuff. Some of the administrators at MOE have said that the benefits and training only received by the second-shift teachers from the international organizations; have created a sort of gossip and jealousy environment inside MOE. They added that if the international community carries on in this manner (supporting refugee education only), they will create a new tier of education in Jordan, and in the long-run, refugee students will outperform nationals at the public schools, like the case of UNRWA schools.

Another problem is that refugees have come to reside mostly in urban areas seeking better economic opportunities. This has forced around 200 schools in urban areas to be running on double-shift, and these schools outcomes used to be better than the average of all the schools in the country. In which it might affect their outcomes in the long-run. Nevertheless, it's still a better solution than overcrowding, as many households were protesting in some areas of Jordan and didn't want to send their children to schools because they are overcrowded after the Syria crisis.

They also have confirmed that up to this point, there is no study has evaluated the causal impact of the crisis on the quality of education. Most of the previous studies have used a qualitative approach (focus-group work) and focused on the quality of education provided for refugees. That's because designing and carrying out such a quantitatively-based study is really difficult due to many reasons: designing reliable control groups; the available quantitative data don't reflect the real image of the impact due to many reforms in the education system in Jordan; as well as that the quality of education is affected by many internal and external factors. Nevertheless, they revealed that this is the first study to talk about the sake of fixing the damage which has been caused during the period between 2012 and 2015. And they agreed that this damage might cause a huge gap in the long-run between the students at the affected host communities and their peers at

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the other unaffected areas. Last but not least, they reveled that there is a significant impact of the crisis on education, and it's more qualitative than quantitative. They concluded that these factors which have aggravated because of the conflict in Syria such as Overcrowding, double-shift schools, poverty increase, school's infrastructure destruction, mixing students with divergent skills and the psychosocial impact on the vibe of the classrooms; have affected the quality of education in Jordan, and declined the progress of the sector that the country aspire. It was also important to hear from student's households; Um Ahmad, a mother of 4 school-aged children, two of them (one daughter and one son) attend double-shift schools. She said that she felt a change in their education outcomes, and she has faced many difficulties to follow up with them at home, particularly in 2013 and 2014. That's due to the time reduction, therefore no enough time to solve exercises at the classes, and teachers skip some of the less important topics in order to finish the subject's contents. Also, she said that their attitude to education has changed as they are forced to wake up earlier than before to go to school, in which affected their motivation. Finally, some recommendations to maintain the quality of education for the students who got affected by the refugee crisis are mentioned below.

Recommendations 1) Construction of new schools and infrastructure at the most affected host

communities in order to reduce overcrowding and number of schools run on double-shift. As well as, revamping and rehabilitation of the existed ones to enhance the environment for students at these schools, and increase their capacity to enroll more students.

2) Launch new economic initiatives and programs to reduce poverty at the most affected host communities in order to help households and decrease dropout's ratio. Also, provide more support to the entrepreneurial activities at these communities, and provide more qualitative educational programs to youth at these areas.

3) Develop a remedy plan to fix the damage at the schools which experienced overcrowding or operated on double-shift during the years between 2012 and 2017. Many projects should be carried out to give more support to teachers and students at these schools in order to help them catching up with their peers at the other less affected or unaffected schools.

4) Programmes to develop the skills of students and teachers at the public schools in general and in the schools which got affected by the crisis in particular. Also, to enhance the infrastructure of these schools in order to reduce the gap between their students and students enrolled in the private education.

5) Many public schools infrastructure and health conditions are very bad comparing with the private sector and UNRWA schools. Therefore, more concern should be given to the improvement of health and sanitary

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conditions at these schools. Also, provide more entertainment facilities to students, as it has a high impact on enhancing their motivation to education.

6) More support to the host communities households to enroll their kids at an early stage of education programs and kindergarten. As many studies have proved that education at an early stage helps children a lot in having better results in the long-run. Since, the economic condition is the major factor behind not enrolling kids at such education stage, as it's not free like the primary and secondary education.

6. Conclusion

In March 2011, the world's biggest refugee crisis since the World War II came out. The conflict in Syria has forced more than 6 million people to be internally displaced within their country, and over 4.8 million to be refugees outside of Syria. Only 664,118 of them are registered with UNHCR in 2016, meanwhile, the latest national census in late 2015 revealed that there are around 1.3 million Syrian refugees in Jordan. The crisis itself has imposed a comprehensive impact on Jordan's economy, services and other sectors. Meanwhile, the high influx of Syrian refugees into the major Jordanian cities has put a great pressure on the infrastructure and services in refugee-hosting communities. The education system in Jordan, which was already struggling to recover from the onus of hosting the Palestinian and Iraqi refugees, is now overburdened by the new refugee crisis. Jordan's economy is among the smallest in the Middle East with insufficient supplies of water, oil, and other natural resources. This made of education as the main source of economic development in the country. It's the attribute which gives the country an excellence over many other countries in the Middle East, and for many years it holds the highest rank among Arab states. On one hand, the crisis has impacted the quality of education in Jordan due to the increase of overcrowding, many schools to run on double-shift, poverty and brain drain challenges have exacerbated. On the other hand, the refugee education worldwide is poor and unacceptable in comparison with what should be provided according to the UNHCR mandate. Nevertheless, Syrian refugee education in Jordan with regards to all the challenges they are facing is in a better situation. Their enrollment is higher than the international average, and the quality of education they have received is slightly better than in their own country before the crisis.

However, the international support was significant at the first two years of the crisis, but it has unsurprisingly declined to lower levels as soon as it was clear that the crisis will last for so long. Anyway, after the London Syria Conference in 2016, the international attention to the crisis has increased again, as it's noticed that the refugee crisis might create serious problems in their host communities and worldwide. Particularly, that Jordan has passed through some periods of hardships and political instability after the year 2010, and the whole world agree that this country in the heart of the Middle East conflicts should be always stable. Refugee

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education strategies and the international organizations intervention always have been creating a multi-tier education system at the host communities. Yet, the education system in Jordan is divided into 4 different layers: the best one is the private education, then education at UNRWA schools, later is the education at the public schools, followed by the education provided for Syrian refugees at host communities or in their camps. Palestinian refugees were the reason behind creating the second layer, meanwhile, Iraqi refugees have widened the gap between private and public education. Eventually, the Syrian refugee education will create a new layer in the education system in Jordan. Moreover, in the long-run, they will outperform the nationals at the public schools if the international intervention will carry on in the same way of providing support only to refugee education. Add to the aforementioned, that the students at the public schools are mostly poor, underprivileged or from lower middle-class. Accordingly, it's suggested that there should be a significant paradigm shift in the way how international organizations respond to refugee education. As well as carrying out a project-based plan to remedy the damage caused by crises in the education system at the host communities. Finally, an urgent and strong collaboration between GOJ and the international community to mitigate the long-term impact of the Syria crisis on Jordan should be implemented. Furthermore, to give more focus to providing a better education with high-quality for both Jordanian and Syrian students in the country, and to provide more support to the public education system to enhance its resilience to the crisis.

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